China wonkdom wondered how the new Taiwanese president, William Lai, would handle—and Beijing would react to—today’s commemoration on the island of 10/10 day, the 113th anniversary of the end of the Qing Dynasty. This holiday is often labeled Taiwan’s National Day, adding to the complexities of the modern world so let’s briefly go over the history again as it’s enlightening, if not complicating.
The Great Qing, a Manchurian rather than Han dynasty, ruled China from roughly 1644 through 1912, sweeping in from the Manchurian homeland in the northeast. It was during that initial quarter century of Manchu power that Taiwan first came under the sway of mainland governance rather either than the Portuguese or Dutch who tried colonizing from the beginning of the Sixteenth Century or the isolated status of a remote land mass. The initial Malay-speaking immigrants from Southeast Asia, now about 1% of the 24 million inhabitants, first populated the island in force about two thousand years ago but were hardly integrated into the world system.
A substantial portion of the Cantonese-speaking diaspora sailed from China’s southeast Fujian province beginning with accelerating trade after the thirteenth century. Millions depart the mainland as traders and lived with their families in small villages on the relatively empty island while the aboriginal communities isolated themselves in the mountainous interior. These more recent Chinese emigrés were the bulk of the population until the late 1940s.
History indicates the mainland’s “control” over the wild island, as the Qing portrayed it, was spotty, giving lie to the CCP fiction of Taiwan being an inseparable portion of the great Chinese nation for thousands of years. The Qing neither had the capacity nor the interest to subjugate the islanders, instead working off a more traditional semi-feudal arrangement whereby mainland control amounted to empowering a series of governing agents who the Qing trusted. Taiwan residents traded with Fujian, Guangzhou, and other areas but de facto operated with a great deal, if not complete, autonomy.
In 1895, as the declining Qing lost a naval conflict with the rising Imperial Japanese navy, the Treaty of Shimonseki established conditions for the future. Japan became the power over the island, with Japanese as the official language for many activities (such as education) and occupation by officials representing the Emperor and his government. Taiwan suffered far less through this occupation than did Korea following its colonization by Tokyo fifteen years later or the many locations where Japanese forces seized control at the beginning of World War II. Today, almost a hundred and thirty years after the transfer occurred, conversations with all but one single Taiwanese citizen is more measured about Japan than anywhere else in Asia. Taiwan retains a few of the hints of Japan’s governance but virtually none of the bitterness pervasive elsewhere in Asia.
The Qing dynasty proved increasingly corrupt and incapacitated through the nineteenth century. Inability to address internal challenges, most spectacularly and deadly the Taiping Rebellion which killed tens of millions between 1850 and 1864, and the expanded sense of futility driven by the actions of foreigner regimes during the Century of Humiliation (1842-1949), led to the creation of competing visions for China’s future. On 10 October 1911, officials from more than a dozen provinces seceded from the Qing at a meeting in the city of Wuhan. The youngster nominally the final Qing emperor clung to power for another four months into 1912 but the proclamation of a new face of China dates to this October rejection of Qing governance.
The most prominent alternative leader was Sun Yat-Sen, born in Guangdong province before studying medicine in the United States and fundraising elsewhere. Preferring to heal lives through politics, Sun became the driving force of the Guomindang, or Nationalist Party of China. Sun had a host of political theories as well as a vision for the future nation, supported primarily by supporters from the oft-volatile southern China area rather than the staid capital in Beijing. (One could argue the creation of a post-Qing China under the southerners validates doubts regarding ethnic and cultural unity in China but that is perhaps an overstretch and certainly a topic for another day.)
Post-Qing China simply did not have a single governing party or figure, though the Nationalists came closer than anyone else. The decade following Wuhan was chaotic with considerable war lord division across the country, undermining attempts to unify into a modern state. Sun was a politician and an ideologue, married the daughter of one of the wealthiest Shanghai Christian businessmen of the early twentieth century, Charlie Soong. One of Sun’s closest aides was a Japanese-trained Chinese military officer, Chiang Kai-shek, later to marry another Soong daughter, who succeeded as the Nationalist Movement’s chairman upon Sun’s death in 1925.
The Nationalists were the closest to a governing movement in the 1920s, as the civil war began developing with the Communists, a Marxist-Leninist party born in Shanghai in 1921. Chiang Kai-shek tried to impose Nationalist control throughout the country but with limited success under the Northern Expedition (1926-1928). He also attempted to exterminate putative Communists allies as civil war enveloped the country when relations between Chiang and the Communists became irreparable in the late 1920s and 30s.
The Japanese expanded warfare on the mainland in the 1930s, begun with the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, slowed the civil war between Nationalists and Communists. Each side “ate bitter fruit” by collaborating to oust the hated Imperial Japanese forces beginning in the late 30s. Once the allies succeeded in 1945, Tokyo turned over Taiwan to nominal Nationalist Party control as civil war entered its final years. As it became clear that Chiang’s forces would lose to the communists, many of his supporters and their families relocated with their wealth to Taiwan as if a Guomindang fiefdom, always avowing it a temporary move before Chiang rallied the nation back from the new communist state proclaimed at the Forbidden City in October 1949.
Nationalists were harsher on the Taiwanese citizens than had been Japanese when one-man rule began in 1949, first the ousted mainlander, then his son Chiang Ching-kuo. A society whereby the Taiwans, those whose families arrived before 1949, had decidedly fewer opportunities (and rights) guaranteed the success of Chiang family rule through 1988 when the son passed. No invasion of the mainland occurred, with only halfhearted attempts to use CIA agents to infiltrate Tibet and southern China failed as the communists consolidated power after 1949.
Chiang Ching-kuo, educated as a Marxist-Leninist in Moscow when the Nationalist-Communist cooperation “governed” in the 1920s, recognized the need to embrace democracy to assure any continuity of Nationalist power or any possible future for the island. Beginning in 1996, the island became the fully-fledged democracy (I think it’s a hyper democracy as so few limits on participation exist) we have witnessed for three decades. Beijing continues menacing the island but its position as a de facto sovereign state is remarkable in the modern world.
Therein, however, lies the reason wonks wondered about Lai’s speech. A mere dozen microscopic countries, not including the United States or our allies, recognize Taiwan as the government of China; Beijing expects to be the sole government for China. Indeed, the Nationalist government, the Guomindang, of Sun or the Chiangs last governed Taiwan between 2008-2016 since the Democratic Progressive Party won the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections. A party with its roots entirely on the island, DPP supporters rarely has any interest in the mainland nor did they ever aspire to reunite with the mainland, regardless who governs there.
Yet, no leader in office in Taipei ever proclaims he or she rules a sovereign, independent Taiwan since Beijing long ago made clear that is a de jure status it would go to war to prevent such action. I have written repeatedly why the CCP clings to this stance but rest assured Xi Jinping shows no willingness to back away from it.
William Lai gave a speech on 10/10 Day that was pretty standard—convoluted but never crossing the line. Beijing trusts him even less than his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, as Zhongnanhai sees time marching towards a greater consensus among islanders to oppose reunification. This all occurs as CCP legitimacy suffers because of its own behaviour, whether on pushing more women to have children (most don’t want more than a single child, if that), economic uncertainty, silencing of any sort of thinking beyond Xi Jinping Thought, and other authoritarian dicta the General Secretary enacts. None of this does a whit to encourage Taiwans to seek that rapproachement Beijing assures them is a historic inevitability not does it assure them they can continue in their current peculiar status.
We are not central to the Taiwan status, though it is a major concern for many Americans. War could be catastrophic between the United States and China, but would most definitely be such for the islanders themselves. Our law, not the agreement or behavior between any individual president and the CCP (despite their protestations), mandates we provide articles of a defensive nature (weapons) to Taiwan should it be necessary. In classic Congressional wishywashiness, that is how specific the law is. Presidents for more than forty years have spoken as if they would defend the island, even if they won’t directly reject Beijing’s interpretation of our commitments. As I have noted, too few outside of government even know that is what our legal obligation is yet they opine about it ad nasueum.
It’s ambiguity because we like it that way. We could clarify for or against the current de jure condition but that would invite massive consequences, at home and abroad. We do have a range of views, however, so ambiguity fits for many reasons. So we continue trying to have our cake and eat it too. We just hope as interlocutors that Lai will do the same. No guarantees about him or the “cousins” across the Strait a hundred miles away. Perhaps at least as important, who knows whether non-governmental, unofficial promises by people without obligation to enact them are occurring—a real danger.
Time will tell but an awful lot of shadowboxing is underway in Asia these days. 10/10 day is merely a reminder.
Thank you for reading Actions today or any other day. Please feel free to circulate if you find this of value. I appreciate your time every single day. I also greatly enjoy all (yes, all) of your comments, questions, and suggestions or rebuttals. That is what I want from this process. I cherish the subscribers who provide me resources to do this.
It was a spectacular sunrise.
Be well and be safe. FIN
https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202410100004